Wallander: Land Of Light
by Rodney Spolin
Summary: Kurt Wallander, the perhaps most depressed homicide investigator in Skåne, goes to a place that's as colourful as it is peaceful; the magical land of ponies, Equestria. However, even this world seems to have an entirely new conflict in store for him. Ironic how he can't seem to find peace even in a supposed paradise such as this one.
1. 1 Behind the Black

1.  
Behind the Black

* * *

Kurt stood in the all-devouring darkness.  
The loose asphalt under his shoes was crunching and gnashing with every ever-so-slight move. His feet shivered, tremored even, in the coldness that was sweeping around him. His breast nervously inflated and deflated, taking in the freezing, numbing air with every of his hectic, short breaths. His hands hung awkwardly by his sides, rolling into fists, again and again, as trying to rub some warmth and sense into themselves. Under the cold, his eyes began to tear. Salty fluid flowed downwards, soaking his lids and his tear sacs, turning them sore and stinging.

And through his bleary, glassy eyes, he espied a light cutting through the black; a single, dirty yellow orb enthroned several feet in the air.

Like in a daze, he took a limp step towards it, determined to leave the pernicious shadows on the unlit path.

It was an ordinary street lantern. Extremely ordinary. A grimy bulb fitted into a round scuffed fishbowl lamp, which sat on a grizzled iron post that was shedding its grey skin and rusting under the gnawing sea air. The crumbling tarmac it stood on did nothing short of sonsummating the picture of dilapidation.

Then he espied a figure that was huddled under the light. That creature of the night was clad in baggy trousers and a pitchblack hoodie with the cowl pulled over its head entirely, and seemed to lean on the post.

He took another step towards the suspicious character. Then the figure moved. From afar, Kurt saw how the hoodie, obscured by the erratic play of light and shadows, pulled a bar-like tool seemingly out of nowhere. Then he struck out. Kurt saw a flash flying as it whirled around. With a metallic clang, it collided with the post, sending a rain of sparks flying from the impact.  
Then the character lunged once more, this time harder.

Kurt realised very slowly what that figure was attempting to do. Clang, the tool in its hands went a second time. Another set of sparks. The grimy light flickered momentarily.

Kurt stumbled forward, alarmed by what the other one was doing.  
"Hey." He croaked hoarsely.  
"Hey. Hey!"

The hoodie hacked away at the lamp post unshakenly.

"Stop! Stop it!"

Another clang. Another spark. Another momentary flicker of the light.

"Police!" Kurt yelled.

The figure struck out, but hesitated. Its cloaked head turned toward him.

"Stop it! Police! Stop!"

As Kurt stumbled closer and closer to the lamp, the attacker lowered his instrument of destruction dangerously. It was a long, robust woodcutter's axe, shimmering in the grimey light.

"Put… put that down!"

The figure turned around. And before Kurt could react, it darted to the side. With a single, fluid motion, the character dove into the night beyond the street lamp's shining where he had come from.

Kurt reached the maltreated lamp post. Resting against it with one hand, he stared into the direction the assaulter had fled to. An unrevealing, gaping blackness stared back.  
The hoodie was gone, gone for good.  
In an approach of frustration, Kurt clasped the lamp post with the other hand, and leaned his head on it, like he was locking it in a despaired hug.

A world of darkness, and one light; what it needs the least, is more darkness.

But again, despite everything, the light flickered. And it flickered stronger and stronger.  
"Oh damn. No."

God knew what awaited him out there, should this light go as well. He was lost, far away from the closest street or house, disoriented and trapped by the rising night. He knew not where to go, nor did he recall what way he had just came from.

He felt his phone in his pocket. He wondered, should he call someone for help? But whom? Magnus, his partner? Lisa Holgersson, his chief? His little Linda? And what should he tell them? That he was in the middle nowhere? That would help them as little as him. It would just end up unsettling them. And he didn't want that to happen.

Another flicker.  
Then the streetlamp went out entirely.

Kurt was standing in the dark. That was it. A bungling cop, wandered out into the night, and did not find his way back. He was too scared to call out for help, and he thought he knew better than to bother the ones he knew with this predicament.

He felt the cold nagging at him again. He could not stay here, but venturing out there, into the blindness which the dark invariably augured, was out of the question as well.

"What is the matter, supercop? What are you thinking you're clinging onto there?" a scornful voice rang out from somewhere close.

Kurt whirled around nervously, trying to make out the source of the voice. Then he noticed he was indeed still clinging to the freezing lamp post. His lips trembled as he tried to counter up the strength to face the voice.  
"Who… where are you?"

"Right over here, faintheart!" the voice shouted.  
A split second later, Kurt felt something sharp fly right by his ear. With a panicked yelp, he ducked to the ground as something weighty and metallic hit the pavement behind him. In nigh-panic, he sunk into his knees, breathing even shorter and louder as his panic tripled. He was still blind, he was still trapped in the gaping darkness.  
And now there was someone, or something out there, out to get him. He couldn't help but whimper as he looked around frantically, searching for some trace movement in the nothingness.

"Have you been looking for me, copper?" the voice snarled. Yet it now seemed to come from an altogether different direction.

"I… I…"

"Or have you just 'stumbled across me'?"  
The voice was closing in.  
"Shame it's just your light that has gone."

Holding one hand protectively in front of himself, Kurt stood up again, his knees shaking as he did, continuously staring on the big black curtain that had seemed to have fallen all around him.

"I would have expected someone like you to have more guts than that."

A gloved, bony hand shot out of the darkness, catching him by the throat and violently pinning him against the lamp post. The detective gargled and lunged for air in utter panic as the grip tightened. With his own hands, he tried to divert the attacker's grasp, but it was insanely strong.  
He felt that the person whom the hand belonged to stepped closer to him. Kurt felt his mouth breathing only half a metre away from his own.

"In a way, shouldn't you have wondered how something like that hasn't happened sooner already?"

Kurt pressed his eyes shut, trying to control his breathing. Yes, of course he had wondered. Was it all going to end now?

"Saying nothing is not going to save you now, detective."

Kurt felt like saying something. He breathed something weakly.

"What was that?" the voice asked.  
"Can't you speak up? Or are you too weak to pull even that off?"

By now, Kurt was praying that it would simply end. The pressure in his throat had become unbearable.

"Hey Kurt."

How did he know his name, the inspector thought.

"You never wondered what's behind the black, did you? Did you?"

With the immense power that held Kurt in place, the attacker lifted him into the air, leaving Kurt figeting and wriggling several inches over the ground like a fish.

"Not that you had the to ever go out there and find out for yourself. You were always stuck to the lights like a moth. What you would find out there would surprise you. "

The assaulter carried him away. Kurt felt it, the saving metal lamp post slipped further and further away from his grasp.

"Because occasionally, all you need to overcome your obsession with light is a healthy amount of darkness!"

The hand swung around, pulling him along by the neck. He felt the momentum build up, all the way from his head to his dangling feet.

The the hand let go. Kurt felt the wind flying past him, the sense of balance in his head went amok, he could feel that he was in free fall, flying through the darkness after beeing catapulted there by his mysterious attacker.

He smashed onto the ground, rolling off involuntarily like a rag doll. The impact left him bereft of all power. He lay there limply, slowly regaining his breath.

Looking up, he saw nothing but the night's sky, speckled by a few weak stars hanging far above him.  
But as he tilted his head left, he noticed that he still wasn't alone.  
Out of nowhere, there was suddenly a tall creature towering above him on four legs. It was about as dark as the night sky - the only thing which stood out were its bright, white eyes.

What was it? An elk? A bull? A horse?  
Before he could finish wondering, the beast's gaze fixated on the exhausted human at its hooves.  
In a manner that a horse would scrabble the dirt pavement of a circus' manege with its front hooves, this one took its limbs to the policeman's head, carving something into the earth around him. Almost as if it was trying to prop up his head on a pile of dirt. Then the creature stopped again, looking back up.

"Enough!" a powerful voice suddenly roared.  
Shocked, Kurt pressed his eyes shut, trying to lift his limp hands above his face prudently.  
A booming female voice that radiated authority and determination.  
"This is enough. Let this farce finally end! One has tortured this squalid soul for too long already. As the Princess of the Night, I command that this whirlpool of fear and anguish shall disperse!"

Still shivering from the shock and the cold, Kurt soon felt something soft and fleecy growing under him, tickling his neck. It was no longer the concrete that he had walked on before. It was like grass, or moss.

With his eyes still pressed shut, he noticed how everything was becoming lighter around him. His surroundings continuously became clearer and brighter.

He was in…


	2. 2 Equestrian Pomp

2.  
Equestrian Pomp

* * *

(You may want to play this: /watch?v=w098rz-rdiQ)

... in an airplane.

The humming of the engines revertebrated in his ears, his head was slumped against the ugly beige leatherette backrest of his seat. His white shirt, the cheap blue blazer he wore over it and his jeans were glued to his skin, sticky with freezing cold sweat. To his left, the round porthole window was closed with a plastic flap, and yet some strings of bright white light were shining through. To his right, he saw rows upon rows of other airplane seats, all of them empty. In front of him, an outdated issue of the _Kvällposten_ was stuck into the net of the front seat.

Oh, and his phone was ringing too.

'Bloody nightmares.' he hissed as he picket it up.  
"Uh... Wallander here."

"Kurt. How are you?"

It was his ever-so faithful partner.  
"Magnus. I... hello."

"Hi, I just wanted to make sure you landed well."

Kurt groaned as he stretched his lethargic, tensed-up limbs and looked around again.  
"I... uhm... I don't think I'm... I think we're still flying."

"You were scheduled to land half an hour ago. What's keeping you?"

Wallander sighed, then he turned back and pulled open his window cover.  
"I have no..."  
What he saw got the words stuck in his throat.

They had landed.  
He saw lush green grass, red fields of poppies, yellow patches of daisies and dandelions, seas of bluebell-like flowers, bountiful olive-green forests and acres making up the horizon. He could see a part of the tarmac under the grounded aircraft's wings. It was made of clean, brown sand. The sky was bright and blue almost void of any clouds, set against the setting sun shining in his face from high above.

"Oh God, we've landed already." Wallander said aghast and stretched himself again.

"You mean you didn't notice, Kurt?" Magnus asked skeptically.  
"Were you asleep again?"

"Yes?" Wallander responded unsurely and unbuckled himself.  
"No one woke me. Maybe we are still taxiing..."

He slowly peeped over the seats.  
The entire plane was deserted. But not that was strange - it had already been void of any other passengers when he had entered it - but none of the air stewards were there either, and the door to the cockpit was half open. He saw light coming in from around the corner, roughly where the front exit of the plane.

"They're all gone..."

"Oh Kurt." Magnus said, barely hiding a snigger.  
"If I were you, I'd find someone quickly, or else they'll fly the whole way back with you."

Kurt suddenly found his breath shortening with nervousness.  
"Alright alright, Magnus, bye."

"Call me when you- _*click*_"

Kurt made his way to the front of the plane. Indeed, it lay completely empty save for himself.  
Or at least he thought that before he spotted a pair of big, perfectly round eyes scrutinising him from the open exit hatch.

"Oh, uhm... excuse me?" Wallander said forlornly.  
"Can you..."  
The onlooker quickly pulled his head away from behind the corner and seemingly dashed out of the plane.  
"Hey!?"

He squeezed through the aisle and came to a halt in front of the open plug door. Shielding his tired eyes from the impending sunrays, he move out onto a gangway that been positioned by the plane.

"Ten... _shun!_" an authoritative voice suddenly rang out.

And the band started playing with much pomp and circumstance.

Wallander froze with shock on the gangway like a elk in front of an oncoming headlight.

Below him on the airfield, two whole platoons of assembled armour-clad soldiers had begun blasting a (Norwegian, as far as he recalled) march out of a dozen trumpets and a dozen horns, accompanied by seemingly a hundred heavy drums, their polished armour glistening in the intense afternoon sun.  
Now, they didn't play very well, which was to say, their performance was audibly awful. They seemingly tried more of a strength-in-numbers apparoach for their music, rather than actual precision.

Even with the threat of the imminent rupture of his eardrums, he courageously descended down towards the cacophonic onslaught, trying to guess what was going on. And as he descended, he made one very exciting discovery.  
None of the musicians was human.  
It was more of a medieval cavalry detachment, sans cavalrymen.

They were all equines. _Ponies_.  
Ponies packed in heavy golden armourplates, but all ponies nevertheless.  
Kurt quite didn't know what to do.

* * *

He had, _of course_, expected this...  
He knew that this was going to happen. That there would be creatures waiting for him that weren't human.  
But he had certainly hoped that more humans would be present to prepare him for what was about to come.

In his dazed state, he had trouble thinking back to how this all had come to be.

Ever since Holgersson had lured him out from behind his desk, squeezed his hand and made all the other guys in the station clap for him - ever since she gave him the one-way plane ticket to UN-Development Area 12, also known as 'the Principlaity of Equestria', he knew he would meet such strange, sentient ponies... and that any attempt to interact with them will culminate in some kind of embarrassing or awkward situation... usually on his behalf.  
As if it wasn't already bad enough when Kurt had to meet new _people_...

What, Kurt thought, was he thinking when he accepted the commission to go to Equestria, to represent the Swedish Police Service in the world's very first non-human nation?  
He, who had wounded, killed others on duty, he who had blamed himself with the deaths of so many others, and he who had been suspended from his job and cited out of sight by his superiors so often.

He, a homicide investigator, who could not simply swallow his horror and sorrow over yet another murder like the others... He, who broke down in tears where others would just wrinkle their noses... was now supposed to be the model of a Swedish police inspector? How was he a good model of anything? When it came down to it, he wasn't even a good model of a human being.

Provided, of course, the reason his boss had 'volunteered' him for the training commission in Equestria, was actually because of his investigative prowess, and not simply because the others had grown tired and weary of his constant 'scenes'.

_"Equestria is a peaceful country, Kurt."_ she had told him. _"They don't know how to cope with crime, even if they had some."_ What did she mean by that? Merely that Equestria needed Wallander? Or that Wallander needed Equestria?

He knew that at least the first part was true. Equestria was one of those strange, strange phenomenons that had simply appeared on earth out of thin air.

It wasn't entirely clear if Equestria had always been hidden on earth, and had not been found until two years or so ago, or if it ended up appearing on the planet (in form of a very isolated pacific island) due to some kind of abstract, obscure inter-dimensional rift. Science hadn't caught up with that incident yet, but in any case, Equestria at least showed itself to be an open and studious nation, willing to embrace humanity, if only the humans were to embrace them as fellow equals as well.

* * *

As Kurt finally reached the bottom of the stairs, the marching music came to a slow, ill-paced halt. In the few seconds between him stopping right in front of the playing ponies, as he found himself surrounded by two dozen glaring sets of eyes hidden under shining helmets, Kurt suddenly felt like he stood trial for something. A military trial perhaps. For what, cowardice, maybe? Was it through cowardice that he was now standing there and not in his home country, with his daughter and his late father? Or at least with Baiba Liepa, the grieving widow from Riga?

He nervously calmed himself with the fact that he was here _merely_ in the line of duty - selflessly working for the benefit of inter-species relationships. And not on some kind of escapist, government-sanctioned mandatory leave.

He was ripped out of his thoughts as one of the pony soldiers marched forward. Left fore-hoof, right back-hoof, right fore-hoof, left back-hoof... in coordinated steps, the small equine cantered up to the Swedish inspector, its armour clanking and jingling, like on National Day in Stockholm.

The military equine halted, and locked eye contact with him. Then it started shouting. In impeccable English.  
"Captain Curd Wall-ender! In the name of my Princesses, Celestia of the Sun and Luna of the Moon, I sincerely wish to welcome you on the soil of the sceptered nation of Equestria, the land of the three Equine tribes of magic, earth and air!"  
Then the creature's mouth flapped shut again, shaping in a pout that would have made Mussolini red with envy.

Kurt looked for an appropriate, _dignified_ response.

"..."

He couldn't think of one. A pony had just yelled at him in English. What could he possibly counter that?

The pony suddenly looked just as forlorn.  
"Uh..."  
With a hoof, he lifted his helmet of his rather sizeable head, and retrieved something small from the inside with his teeth. Then he put it back on and harrumphed as he looked at his hoof.  
"Ehm... _I navnet..._ uh... _til mine to prinsesser_-"

"Oh no please..." Wallander interrupted him.  
"I... I speak English."

"Oh." the equine went.  
"I apologise, Sir. I hope you had a peaceful... plentiful sleep."

"Ugh." Wallander sighed unwittingly.  
"Thank... thank you."

"Company... de-_camp_!" The pony shouted, and the two dozen soldiers immediately broke into a trot and abandoned their ceremonial posts, seemingly with much glee after having to wait for Wallander to wake up for God-knows how long.  
Kurt asked the pony commander, trying to sound as humorous and un-reproachful as possible.  
"Sir... why didn't anyone wake me? When I was in the plane after it landed?"

"Her Royal Highnesses gave me strict orders to treat you with the comfort and dignity a human of your position is due!"

"The... Princesses?" Wallander repeated nervously.

"Of course, Captain! You are a state guest!"

Wallander raised his arms modestly.  
"Oh no no, commander. I... I am with the delegation for the National Swedish Police Board. There must be a misunderstanding..."

"So humble of you, Captain!"

"It's Inspector. Inspector Wallander."

"Well... _Inspector_..." the commander continued, unfazed.  
"Does that mean you do not wish the coach we have specially brought in for you?"

"You brought a coach?" Wallander asked non-plussed.  
He felt reminded of that one time he had travelled to Lithuania, albeit on a far less happy occasion. All that waited for him there was a corrupt cop with a dirty name tag, a smelly car and a funeral in the rain. And Wallander hadn't even asked for as much as that.

"We are a few leaps away from the hamlet of Ponyville, Inspector. We _can_ take a smooth trot there... if you _insist_."  
The commander, a grey earth pony with a red made under his helmet, was probably a young equine, somewhere at the end of his late equine teens - however many human years this would amount to; an ensign who was trying really hard to make a really good first impression.  
As Wallander and the commander boarded the opulently ornamented Rennaisance-esque stagecoach, the latter was dutifully quick to explain that the Royal Guard, the country's national defence force, which seemingly also doubled as a police force, was awaiting him for a loosely arranged series of lectures in things homicidal. Kurt wisely chose not to ask why they had decided to send in a Swedish lecturer for a theme such as murder, but he also knew that he could tell them a lot about death, so he figured it was approriate after all.

The pony also explained to him that, although it was arranged that he be accomodated in Canterlot, the royal city of residence and the nation's capital, he was to spend this night in the nearby hamlet of Ponyville, a medium-size provincial backwater, and, in the wondrous words of the young stallion, an 'enchanting enclave in the middle of nature'. Apparently, the Equestrian government thought that a night trip to the far-away capital was too much to ask of their dear human guest.  
Honestly, Wallander liked the sound of that, he had already preferred the untouched nature to the urban sprawl of Ystad or Malmö any day. But he still silently hoped that there would be the possibility to take a bath or a shower in the inn they were bound to.

He looked out of the window of the elegantly carpented coach, watching the red sun disc set over the nearby mountains.  
"Beautiful at this time of the year, isn't it?" the red-maned guard commander inquired with a kind smile.

"Oh yes. It's very pretty." Wallander agreed. Even though he had never particulalry liked the sunset. For him, it was a symbol for things final and irreversable.

"Where you come from, Captain... do you also have such a brilliant sundown?"

"At this time of year? No, we don't have a sunset at all."

The commander repsonded with mildly shocked gasp.  
"Really? No sunset? But... but doesn't it mean that it never turns night? No stars and no moon?"

Wallander shook his head. He could not help but smile at the equine's surprise a this natural phenomenon. He had probably never as much as heard of something like that in his whole life.  
"Where we come from, we call is 'midsommar'. It's the middle of summer, and the brightest time of the year. The night is more like... twelve hours of twilight."

"That's..."  
The pony was lost for words.  
"No night... gosh, I had no idea it was possible. Does Princess Luna never grace your lands then?"

"Who?"

"Luna. The Princess of the Night."

"Oh. Well, not at this time of year, at least." Wallander shrugged.  
Were the commander's words a metaphor or more of a religious statement? Kurt hoped he hadn't offended him.

"No worries, Captain. I will pass word of this to my Princess as soon as possible."

"Alright. You do that."

* * *

Outside, Kurt spotted the first houses on the roadside. They were houses, cottages, with thatched roofs and beams worked into the white walls. Yellow and orange banners were hanging on every street corner, decorating all the nicely crafted street lanterns. It felt strangely homely for Kurt, even thought such towns seemed to be more typical for the England or France of olden days.  
While the streets swere mostly abandoned, there were some other equines running to and fro, small ones playing and horsing around, old ones cleaning up stalls and booths and generally being on their way home. A few of them waved at the coach and its escorts as they passed through in a regal manner, whirling up roadside dust as they did.  
Kurt was pleased to see what a friendly, warm climate resided in this particular country. No rush-hour hustle, no bored, frowning faces on the passers-by, no teens or bums sitting on street corners and drinking vodka straight out of the bottle. It was harmonius, content, well off.  
A rare beauty.

"Don't get fooled. It's the calm before the storm." the commander commented giddily.

"What do you mean?"

"You see those booths and those banners?" he asked, with a happy grin on his face.  
"In a couple of days, those folks will do a Summer Sun Celebration. It's going to a feast in the honour of Princess Celestia, who, as you know, is in charge of the sun."

'They even have their own Midsommar celebration.' Kurt thought. This place was even more homely than he suspected.

The coach halted in front of one of the taller houses in the village. Wallander was in awe when he noticed that the entire roof had been painted white and accented with thick white edges, as if to give it an chocolate-like, edible impression, and out of that roof additonally stuck a completely pink oriel, which in return was crowned by three torches, shaped and decorated like birthday candles. This building was probably as close to witche's gingerbread house as a building could get. Whoever proprieted this patrticular house had chanelled a lot of effort and detail into it.

"Am I in Cockaigne?" Wallander humoured.

"No, that's Sugarcube Corner." the commander corrected him, oblivious to the Swede's reference.  
"I say, why don't you go to the front desk already, while my colts will unload your luggage for you?"

The inside of the place was just as opulently and lovingly, if also slightly over-decorated as its exterior. It was obviously some kind of cafe or sweets store, and the theming of the decor was impeccable.

Now, Wallander mused, he just had to wait for the depressed, old lady of the house with the glasses, the excessively painted lips and the dull polyester sweater to man the counter and show him his room with a monotone voice and a subtly contemptful expression. Wallander had gone through this procedure way too often, every time he was over the bridge in Denmark or up in Norway and had to find himself an affordable B&B or hostel. The world really seemed to have a dispensable amount of grumpy, disillusioned widows with a taste for the flavourless who earned their retirement by renting out their basements, attics and other furnished crawlspaces. Wallander began to wonder; what did equine widows look like, anyway?

"Helloooo, is somepony out there?" a melodical voice roung out from behind the curtain and freed Wallander from his grim fantasies.

"Yes. I... I believe I have a room reserved for me here? On the name Wallander?"

"Wallander... what a crazy name." the voice muttered. Seconds later, a blue-furred pony head popped out, with a pink-ish beehive haircut that bounced around as she moved. Her eyes began to shine when she spotted the human.  
"By Celestia... you must be the special guest! The human! Honeybud!"

"Sorry?" Wallander muttered.

"Yes, cuppycake?" another voice shouted from upstairs.

"Our royal visitor! He's heeeere!"

"Oh!"  
Within a few moments, a thinner, lankier pony stormed into the room, breathing heavily and squeakily, but kept up a happy grin the entire time.  
"You must be Card, good sir."

"Kurt Wallander, yes."

"Card the Wall-Ender." the female pony said with a smile.  
"You must be a _great_ bricklayer if the Princess herself has requested a room for you in our modest home."

"Oh, I'm not..." Wallander stammered. Was she joking or...

"Oh, you're in the demolition business then! A thousand pardons." the male interrupted him.  
"My name is Carrot Cake." He stretched his lanky hoof around the female pony's head and pulled her over to him.  
"And this is my dear wife, Mrs Cake."

"Oh, you!" Mrs Cake remarked cheekily.  
"I am Cup Cake. And I want to welcome you to our modest business. We do not _usually_ take in guests, but we are always glad and happy to share what we have with friends of the Princesses. All five of us do"

"Oh... I thank you." Kurt answered, a bit overwhelmed.  
All five of them? 'They must be a big, happy family then.'

"Would you like a little tour through our... culinary menagerie, or would you like to go to your room first?"

"I am a little tired." Wallander tried to justify himself. "I was flying for twelve hours straight."

"So, it's straight to bed for you, young colt!" Carrot Cake chided him.  
"No offence, Sir."

"None taken, Mr... Cake."

"Please, call me Carrot Cake." the yellow pony persisted adamantly.  
"Friends of the royal family are our friends as well."


	3. 3 Family Cake

3.  
Family Cake

* * *

Kurt ducked as the odd ceiling beam passed right over his head as he followed the lanky stallion through the low-built corridor into the second floor. Carrot Cake held a big oil lamp in his mouth, leading the way with the room key, which he also held in his mouth. Wallander noticed quickly that this building had absolutely no electricity; the rooms and corridors were all illuminated by small candles on every table or stuck into candle holders on the motley plaster walls.

Ultimately they stopped at a heavy, medievally crafted wooden door, to which Carrot Cake, despite being significantly taller than every other equine Wallander had already met, was only half as big. Apparently, solely the doors were made not in tiny equine sizes around here.

Placing the lamp on a table, Carrot Cake lead Kurt into the room, and made him take seat on the great blue bed which stood in the middle of it.  
"Alright, my good human. These are your own four walls for the time you are here. Our candles are your candles, our fireplace is your fireplace, and of course are our goodies also your goodies." He pointed to a tray which stood on a table in the corner, and was generously laden with all sorts of sweet pastry.

"I don't know what to say." Wallander said and looked down the the pony's legs bashfully.

"Just give us a ring in case you do." the yellow pony said, and trotted out of the room.

Then Wallander was alone again, sitting on his bed in a room with his three suitcases, an oil lamp, a slobbered key and a tray of sweets.  
He took a deep breath. The air smelled of marzipan, caramel, vanilla, and a hint of horse stable. The bedsheets were soft, and inviting him to fall asleep as he was. But he knew he had to restrain himself - he already looked, and probably also smelled, like a bum, and seriously had to clean himself up before he committed to anything else.

They wouldn't even have let him on the plane back in Stockholm until he showed the customs officers his badge. They probably thought he was just some guy who had drunk himself silly in the duty-free section after missing his flight back to Poland. Kurt didn't deny that he looked like a wreck of a respectable man.  
Thoughtfully, he scratched the thick stubble on his chin as he contemplated all those colourful beings he had met in the last two hours. There was something about them that didn't want to let him go. They seemed so unusual, so offbeat in a way.  
Of course, he told himself, they were _talking ponies_, intelligent creatures that were not human, but he still had to wonder _how_ they talked, how they moved, how they smiled, and how they behaved in general...

"Bwaaaa."

What was that?

"Eeeeee..."

Did his blanket just make a sound?

"Aaaaa... ba ba ba ba..."

Kurt lifted himself from his bed with a distressed sigh and contemplated his bed carefully.  
Something was moving around under the covers. Somehow, Kurt guessed it wasn't just another gift from his hosts.  
Carefully, he removed the blanket from the bed, layer by layer, until he uncovered a small bundle of orange fur and white cloth.

"Oooooooh..." the bundle went.  
It was another equine. But it was a tiny one, much smaller than all the other ones. Its legs were thick and short, its head big and round and without any apparent physical characteristics like Cup Cake's lump snout or Carrot Cake's bony chin.  
It was a baby equine, an infant.

"Oh... God." Wallander went. Why was a toddler stuck under his blankets?  
Kurt knew she sould have been enthralled by the little thing's cuteness, but instead he found himself feeling sick with worry all of a sudden, driven by fear for the wellbeing and safety of the fragile little thing.  
He remembered the last time he found a baby unattended, all by itself, in that abandoned car on the roadside... the memories of that case was haunting him to this day.

Hesitantly, he lifted the little fellow from his bed with both arms, provoking an excited squeal from him.  
"So... you little pony..." Wallander murmured as he sat down with him, his mouth pulled into a worried expression.  
"What were you doing in my bed, hu?"

The infant pony replied with an amused shake of its limbs and a twinker from its little button eyes.

Kurt could not help but feel reminded of the time where Linda, his daughter, was still a mere toddler. When he could still hold her in his arms and amuse her by shaking her around. When she was not 1,70 tall and offering him a shoulder to cry on, rather than the other way around.  
It was a much happier time both of them, he recalled - it was a time before he had begun to sense that he hardly knew anything about his own child, or had to live with the constant fear that he was losing track of her life.

* * *

"Mr Cake." Wallander shouted down the hallway, still holding the baby pony to his chest.  
"Mr Cake! Are you there?"

"Is something not in order, Mr Card?" Carrot Cake asked as he came gallopping up the stairs.

Wallander just harrumphed and showed him the baby.

"Pumpkin!" the lanky stallion squeed as Wallander softly put him on the floor.  
"Why you little rapscallion. What have you been doing with our poor human guest? You like humans, don't you? Don't you?"

"Is this your child?" Wallander asked, unamused.

"Hee hee, yes she is." Carrot Cake said as he cuddled his daughter's head with his own. "You little squirrel sure know how to give your mum a hard time, don't you?"

"I found her scrambling around under my covers." Kurt explained, his voice dunning.

The stallion gasped.  
"Oh no... Please don't tell me she... well.." he pointed to her diaper.

"No no, not as far as I could see. But... but..."  
He hesitated and looked at his counterpart reproachfully,  
"How... why on earth did you leave her out of your sight like that? If she is your own daughter?"

"I know, I know." the confectioner replied with little remorse, closing his eyes happily.  
"It's just, when mummy and I are occupied and working in the kitchen, it's usually Pinkie Pie - she's our stand-in, you know, a bit like a second daughter - who takes care of little Pumpkin Cake and her brother. But she isn't here today, sadly. She is out, buying ingredients for a party, and-"

"Mr Cake! Carrot..." Wallander stopped him forcefully, then closed his eyes.  
"Please. She is your _daughter_. Don't _ever_... let her out of your sight. Who knows... who knows, what could have happened. I could have accidentally sat down on her, she could have falled off the ledge. Please..."  
He trailed off, finishing with an earnest, pleading stare.  
"You can't be doing that!"

"Oh..." the pony father said with a shaken voice, taken aback by his human guest's unexpectedly serious response.  
"You're right, of course..."  
He picked his daughter up by the diaper with his mouth, placing her on his back, and cowedly beat the retreat.  
"Good... good night, Mr Card, and take care... Sir... I'll be downstairs when... well... y'know..."

Wallander remained towering in the door, watching him descend the stairs super carefully and slowly, as to not endanger his daughter any further. Lowering his head and pressing his eyes shut painfully, Kurt also soon closed the door in front of him.  
What had just come over him? He knew that he was right, of course. But he still felt uncomfortable for snapping it into the carrot-coloured equine's face like that.

He dropped back onto his bed, free to continue with his thoughts.

The Cake couple. His first impression was that they were... eccentric. Moreso - well, maybe not moreso than everyone else he had interacted with in his life. But he knew for a fact that a couple so elated and carefree such as them would never exist in an environment such as Sweden - an environment in which most people would silently condemn a person for as little as randomly smiling on a public bus. Maybe he was was just too used to his own environment, maybe Equestria was just a place with fundamentally different standards.  
Wallander knew he would have to overcome his 'prejudice', because at the moment, he did not see the Cakes as a big happy, eccentric confectioners' family - he saw two middle-aged workaholics who had put insane amounts of effort into their business and their career, building up a name and a dream, and yet at the same time found that they still had to juggle the demands of supporting a young family. And they apparently weren't up to the task.

Committed parents, human ones at least, wouldn't leave their baby children playing somewhere in the house and blame their negligence on the nanny.  
Wallander knew that - he himself had never been a committed parent. And he lived with that guilt every day. He knew that one day, it's accidentally locking the own child in the attic, the next day it's the child, maimed by puberty and self-doubt, taking its own life in a whirlpool of disillusion and forlornness.  
Maybe Wallander didn't want to go past something like this again, even if those were different creatures with different offspring and a wholly different outlook on life.  
Maybe Wallander was thinking into this too harshly. Maybe he should not compare equines to humans any more than is necessary.

His head was spinning. He felt sickly again.  
Then he remembered he had a bottle of bonafide vodka with him, meant as a gift to his hosts... should he take a zip to clear his head? It had worked so often before... but it was for the guests. He shouldn't be drinking, he did not have an alcohol problem, and neither did he wish to get one.

* * *

Quietly, he placed the oil lamp in the empty sink and closed the bathroom door behind him. He was thankful that he could avoid any more Cake family members in the building's twisted corridors on his way there.

The bathroom turned out to be an entirely different affair than the house. Kurt was surprised to see that a house with no electricity or the such had running, even warm water coming out of its walls. He tried to justify it that the equines had developed some kind of canalisation system organised... it didn't matter, he was no plumber.

Sourly, he bent and put his bathing kit at the base of his feet. Like the rest of the house, also the bathroom had been built to accost the equine physique - the sink only reached up to his thighs, the bathtub was only half a metre deep, and the toilet... he wasn't even sure how to use a toilet pan such as this one, but he was almost sure he needed four legs for it.

His first act was to down a mouthful of green mouthwash and keep it in his mouth for as long as possible. It was searing and painful, but it always helped him to wake up and focus on something. Ever since his departure from Sweden, he was quite out to lunch, and so he was plagued by the constant nervousness of having forgotten to pack something. Something vital.

Then he undressed, shivering, and climbed into the empty bathtub. Again, he felt repulsive to his environment, as strange and foreign as it seemed to him. Nothing was ever there or there in a way he was suited. The handles for the water were not handles made for hands, the drain opening was big enough to break his foot if it were to get stuck in there, and the soap consisted of a well-worn pouch hanging on the wall that was used by rubbing one's body against it.

Very quickly, Kurt began to feel something he had not expected to feel this way - home sickness. He had never, not in his entire life, been in a place which could have best been described as 'foreign' as Equestria. And only now did he realise this - as if the fact that this was a nation founded by equines for equines was enough of a giveaway already. He was trying his earnest to not involve the equines themselves in his thoughts again. But how could they be so... mirthful, given all? That actually was the thing that was by far the most off-putting to him. Maybe those equines' brains were simply much more specialised on happiness than those of humans. He was sure they couldn't be more content with such a... disadvantageous physical form.

Before long, he heard footsteps - or rather, hoof-steps - trotting across the floorboards outside the bathroom.  
Oh, hadn't he noticed that Equestrian bathroom doors did not have _locks_?  
"The... the bath is occupied!" he quickly stammered, to avert the worst.

"Okay dokey lokey!" a high-pitched voice he hadn't heard before squealed back from behind the door.

Then the door handle began to turn.

"No! Don't come in, I'm-"

With an acrobatic jump, an equine, pink from head to hoof, landed on the bathroom rug, a mere metre away from Wallander's naked form. Despite all initial shock, Kurt instinctively grabbed a towel out of his bag and threw it over himself.

"Hellooo, Mr Human!" the pony squealed before breaking into a spontaeous yet audible ditty.  
"_Welcome welcome welcome, to Pony-Pony-ville!_  
_A new face in the village, it's always such a thrill!_  
_I hope you'll be my friend now, and we'll have a great time;_  
_With party, punch and cupcakes, to make your stay subliiiiiiime!_"

That left Wallander speechless, in more than one way. Embarrassed, he curled up his legs , hiding them under the towel.  
He could have easily tried to build up enough anger to yell her out of here, but he was not able to say anything.

"My name is Pinkie Pie!" the pony continued unfazed.  
"And I am so excited that you're staying here at Sugarcube Corner and of _course_ you can use my bathtub, no questions asked!"

This was her bathtub? She must have been the 'Pinkie Pie' Carrot Cake had mentioned.

"Could we... could we..." Kurt stammered anxiously.  
"Can we not discuss this now?"

"Why not?" she inquired and looked around. Her eyes bulged out so far towards him that Kurt was half expecting them to pop out.  
"Are you hiding something? Chocolate? Are you hiding chocolate?"

Shamefully, he pointed up and down himself.  
"I am _naked_."

"Huh. So you are." the pink pony confirmed nonchalantly.  
"Anyway, are you taking a bath now?"

"I'm trying to, I would really like to finish up first. Can we... speak later...?"

"No surree, I'm not here later. I'll be over at Applejack's place, it's going to be a super awesome pre-summer-sun-celebration-sleepover-party! Hey, do you know AJ? She is my best friend! She is really strong and she bucks apples, and her family also bucks apples, her brother, and her sister, her granny, and even her parents, or at least they did before they-"

"I would _like_ to take a bath." Wallander said consequently.

She giggled disarmingly. "Oh, silly! You need water to take a bath. I don't know how you humans do it in human-ville, but in Ponyville, we use hot water and lots and losts of bubble soap. They also do that in Canterlot! Oh, and Manehattan! And Fillidelphia! and Baltimare! And Appaloosa! Okay, maybe not yet in Appaloosa, but..."

Wallander's head had begun spinning again. Another wave of lethargy swept over him, robbing him more and more of the will to get vocal at her. Slowly, he leaned his head back and rested against against the edge of the tub, silently waiting for her to simply finish up and go away. Something, he was not quite sure what it was, made him want to resist her intrusion less and less.  
He felt he had little choice left other than to listen to that perpetually talking, hyperactive pink creature. Where did she come from, he asked himself. Was she talking like that with everyone, or did he really seem that sympathetic to her? If this was normal behaviour for equines, he was sure he couldn't adapt to it. Even happiness and joy must have its limits in some cases.  
Then he heard some rustling noises coming from the direction of his bag.  
He looked and noticed not only that she had stopped talking, but instead was now rifling through his stuff with her face.  
"Whoah, there are so many bottles in there! You must me a wizard or a healer or something."

"Could you please leave my bathing kit in peace? At least that."

Her snout emerged again, holding a little brown bottle between her teeth.  
"Whath'th that?"

Wallander could only wince as he noticed she held it by the bottleneck, like a baby a milk bottle.  
"That's aftershave. It's for the skin after shaving."

She spat the bottle back into the bag and let out an amused snigger.  
"Oh you! Why would you want to shave? You don't even have a beard. You've got not much hair anyway! But... you're on your way there..."

Thoughtfully, Wallander's hand wandered over his unshaven chin. He could have easily considered her remarks and her blunt disregard for personal space rude, indecent and provocative, but her words were practically beaming with childish innocence and naivety. How old was she? She looked rather old a mare for someone with her mindset.

"By the way, do you know this joke already? No? Well, this one just came in today. Okay: A Saddle-Arabian foal comes into a pony bar. Then he starts caughing like really bad. The bartender asks him, 'Hey, what's wrong with you?'. And the foal just shrugs and says, 'I'm a little hoarse.'  
Geddit? Because hoarse sound just like horse? And horse sounds just like hoarse? Get it?"

Kurt nodded automatically.  
Then he got it.  
"A little horse?"

"Yep!"

Alright. Kurt had to admit, this joke was amusing. It was worth a smile.  
"Good one."

"Thanks! You're the first one to say that!" Pinkie said, almost bursting with glee.

Wallander turned to her, in a last ditch effort to make her leave.  
"Pinkie... was your name, wasn't it? Pinkie... how about... you tell me another one of your jokes _right_ after I made ready for bed?"

A spark lit up in her dilated pupils. It almost seemed as if she wasn't used to hearing such an offer like that.  
"Okay dokie lokie! Deal's a deal!" she smiled.  
"Don't you forget the water though!"

As little as five minutes later, she finally left.

* * *

Silently, Wallander locked the door to the bathroom as he crept back to his room. That Pinkie character, as loud and obnoxious as she was, was not waiting in front of the bath door for him, and neither was she waiting in the corridor. Perhaps she had moved on to that friend she wanted to 'partey' with.

Almost disappointed at the ease with which he had dispatched her, Kurt was glad to spend the rest of his evening in thoughtful quietness.  
The little pink pony was perhaps the most awkward character he had met up until now, and in an environment such as this one, Kurt suspected this wouldn't last long.  
But as Kurt reached his room's door, he noticed that he had rejoyced too soon after all. The young equine's penetrant singing noise echoed from inside his room as she playfully hummed some distinctive tune.

He sighed before he pushed down the handle. Whether this mare was an actual part of the confectioners' family or not, he was sure that back in Europe, a family would usually keep a child _this_ 'special' in a separate room in the basement, or the attic, or perhaps a furnished crawlspace.

He found the little pink mare sitting on his bed, humming to herself as she rifled through even more of his baggage, with both of his suitcases opened and a few pieces of once-packed clothing lying on the floor here and there.

Wallander felt his patience deplete. He didn't care if she couldn't help herself, nobody, and nopony, should go through his stuff just like that.  
He opened his mouth to say something. He nearly suffocated on his words when he noticed that the pony was pointing at him with a black Sig Sauer police-issue pistol.

His bathing bag slipped out of his grasp and landed on the floor with a thud.

Pinkie smiled and turned the barrel to herself, and peeped right into it with a prying eye.  
"Huh, now either that's a syringe, or..."  
She fingered around the trigger with her thick hooves.

Wallander plunged forward. Hounding for the mare on his bed, he grabbed her forehooves and pulled them away from her face, causing her to ease her grip on the weapon and letting it fall on the bedsheet. She herself lost balance and fell off with an excited shriek. Wallander himself stumbled over on of the bedposts and landed stomach-first on the wooden bedroom floor.

After a few moments of what could only be called a shock stasis, he straightened back up, looking around for the damned pistol. Had Pinkie managed to pull the trigger? Had a shot ripped through the room just now? Had a bullet hit her? Had a bullet hit him?  
Behind the bed, he heard the giggles of the pony. Standing up, he noticed she had landed on the bedroom rug, lying on her back, unharmed, and laughing hysterically. Next to her, on top of the bed, lay the weapon.

Kurt instinctively picked it up and pushed the magazine release. There was no magazine in the gun.  
He cocked the gun - there was no bullet casing in the barrel either, let alone a cartridge.  
Breathing out his nervousness, Kurt exasperately sat down on the bed, gun in one hand. He felt how the bed moved, and seconds later, the mare had taken a seat next right to him.

"Wooohooo!" she shrieked.  
"This was better than a rodeo! You humans really know how to make a surprise entrance! Do you do that often?"  
She spotted the pistol in his hand.  
"Hey, by the way, what is that thing? Is it a cake syringe? Tell me tell me tell me!"

Kurt turned to her, but all he could bring forth was another deep breath. He raised the gun warely with two fingers.  
"This... thing, Pinkie Pie... is a very dangerous-"

Something went click on his mind.  
How the _hell_ did a pistol turn up in his bedroom?  
"Where did you get this from, anyway?" he inquired.

"Oh, it just was kinda lying around."

Kurt inspected the weapon further. It was a pistol of the same type as the one he carried with him on active duty.  
But he knew that he had no business carrying around his service gun as a guest in a foreign country, so he wisely left it at home.  
Or did he?

"Oh God." he breathed. A chill travelled down his spine.  
He couldn't remember ever packing it. So how did it turn up here? Was it even his own weapon? If yes, where was the magazine and the bullets?

"Dangerous _what_?" the curious mare asked.

Wallander only knew too well in what kind of trouble he could get himself now if it was his own. He had smuggled a gun with him into this country, neglectfully left it in an unlocked room in an unsecured manner, and let an usnuspecting, probably unsound p-pony find and play with it?  
He could be _fired_ for something like that.

But he really couldn't remember packing his gun! And even if he did, why would he pack his gun, but not bother to pack a magazine or ammo? Had he been sleep-walking? Was he losing his mind?

"Heeey, Mr Human!" the mare squawked and nudged him.

"Pinkie..." Wallander stammered monotonely.  
"I would like to you to leave now."

"But... but why?" she said, almost wailing in disappointment.

"I said _now_. I mean it." he commanded harshly.

"But... didn't I want to... didn't you want me to..."

Wallander's glare persisted. His voice was almost agressive, he was breathing like a dog after a manhunt, and his soring eyes disclosed the seriousness and the urge of the situation.  
"Tomorrow, maybe."

"Tomorrow, maybe." the pink mare repeated obediently. Then she slipped off the bed, and trotted out the door, her head hanging low. She shut the door behind herself.

What was even going on today?

To top it all off, there now was the whole business with the pistol in his hand... was he really lacking the sanity to remember something as imperative as him packing a gun for a foreign visit?  
He couldn't be _that_ scatterbrained, he couldn't be! That would be something his father would not have gotten away with. And his father was a man who had spent his life in a cottage, drawing oil paintings of the same woods over and over again before burning them.

It seemed that for him, there was now little left for to do today than to lull himself into yet another set of nightmares as he drifted away to sleep.


End file.
